***
In the Guinness Book of Records there is a case of a guy who fell twenty-two thousand feet out of a plane, with no parachute, landed in a tree and a snowdrift, and walked away with a broken hip. Well, he didn’t exactly walk away, but you get the point. People can miraculously survive, for improbable reasons. The reason that Monsoon survived was that Mighty Jupiter was taking a shit at the time that Monsoon got lippy, so he wasn’t in a position to deal with the situation personally. He therefore decided on a little godly intervention so that he could fuck Monsoon up in the proper and deserved fashion at a later date.
Fortunately for Monsoon, he lost consciousness seconds after he fell out of the plane. Approximately one mile to the west of his exit point was an escarpment with a one-in-nine slope at the top, leveling out to a one-in-two at the bottom. There was a ninety-knot easterly wind. At a position of more or less five o’clock from Monsoon’s angle of declination was a flock of seventeen thousand snow geese, give or take a gosling or two, en route to the Sudan for their annual breeding season.
If you want to work out the equation for yourself please feel free to do so, but if not, you will just have to trust these two points: a hundred-and-fifty-pound human being plummeting at max gravity impacting twenty-nine full-grown geese in a ninety-knot easterly equated to the human being being deposited on the soft, snowy lip of a south-facing escarpment, relatively unsplattered, and factoring in the weight, resilience and bonce-cushioning effect of the briefcase which he was still instinctively clinging to with a deathlike rigor mortis grip, sliding down at an at-first-increasing but then friction-reduced velocity, until he traversed five hundred meters of level ground, zipped across a fortunately little-travelled road, lambasted through a wheat barn, and landed bruised, bloodied, and discombobulated, but otherwise unharmed, in the antechamber of a voluptuous middle-aged Russian widow’s farmhouse.
That was the first point. The second point was that Mighty Jupiter doesn’t fuck about when it comes to intervention in mortal affairs.
Monsoon awoke in a goose down bed, with a hot water bottle on his head and a work-hardened but gentle hand softly running up and down the length of his erect penis. Due to his understandable suspicion of the motives of supernatural beings, he refrained from opening his eyes for as long as he could. When he finally did, he saw a plump, pleasant face, which might have been pretty if the work and the weather hadn’t kicked the shit out of it, smiling tenderly down at him.
“Hi,” the lady said in Russian. “I’m Maria.”
Chapter 15
“It feels different now,” Asia said.
“I know,” said Baby Joe.
“I still can’t really believe it.”
“I know.”
“Knowing that you’ve killed someone. That you’ve taken a life.”
“You didn’t kill him, Asia. He killed himself. You saved me.”
“No. I was just there. I was scared. You would have won.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Of course you would. You’re Baby Joe. You always win.”
“Nobody always wins.”
“You do.”
“Sometimes you don’t want to win. Sometimes you don’t care if you win or not.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“And how do I sound? When you take a life, there’s no going back. It’s like virginity. There is no way that you can go on with your life and pretend that it didn’t happen. It’s the ultimate threshold. The trick is not getting to like it. You killed out of necessity. The lioness protecting her cubs. You didn’t premeditate. It was a situation, and you reacted. You reacted well. How would you feel now if you hadn’t? I would be dead, and maybe you too. You did the right thing. It was very brave.”
“You always say the right things. But I still feel changed. I still feel ashamed.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“No. It was awful.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’re okay.”
“Are you two lovebirds still cheeping?”
“Hi, Crispin. How’s it hanging?”
“Listen. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, I’m bored shitless, and the doctor says you can go. So why don’t you get some pants on and let’s go and eat?”
“Okay. Stay frosty. I’m coming. Got anywhere in mind?”
“Oh, yes. There’s a fucking head waiter I need to speak to.”
As Baby Joe shuffled off down the corridor to struggle into the new clothes that Asia had bought him, Crispin plonked himself down on the bed and picked up the bottle of champagne from the bucket. It wasn’t as cold as it could have been and had lost some of its fizz, but Crispin drank it anyway. Asia didn’t notice him get up again and leave.
She was gazing out of the window at the sinister, scary rows of bleak, soulless apartment buildings that marched into infinity down the wide avenue. Who lived there? What were their lives like? How did they get up every morning into that cold, hopeless dawn and carry on? Or maybe it was a paradise in disguise. Each unto his own. What if you didn’t know anything else?
Crispin interrupted her reverie. “Hey, Asia. Guess what?”
“What?”
“I just went to the bathroom.”
“Thanks for keeping me informed.”
“Well, if you’re going to be facetious…”
“No, Crispin. I’m sorry. I’m distracted.”
“You can fucking say that again.”
“No. No. Really. What?”
Crispin leaned close. He looked up and down the ward with his eyebrows raised, like a music hall villain. “Well. You remember I saw that poor man in the restaurant bathroom. The one with no lips?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I just saw him again.”
***
People have different pain thresholds. Nobody really knows if it’s a question of tolerance, or if people feel pain differently. How do you know if you stick a pin in yourself, and then shove it into the guy or gal next to you, if it feels the same to them as it does to you?
Anyway, it wasn’t a concept that meant a great deal to Khuy Zalupa. He was born into pain. He was born into a Russian shitstorm to a dead mother and an uncaring father, and things just went downhill from there. So a couple of bullet holes here and there, a laceration or two, the odd sucking chest wound, maybe a destroyed lymph node, a compound fracture just to round things off, what the big fucking deal. Get up and walk it off.
And that was exactly what Khuy did. But we were talking about physical pain. Emotional pain is an entirely different story. The pain of a lost love can fuck up the toughest, meanest, baddest dude that ever there was. Just ask the big gorilla how his romantic interlude with the blonde turned out. Khuy wasn’t a man given to deep self-analysis or reflection upon the vagaries of existence, but he didn’t need to be a student of philosophy to entertain the suspicion that he might have fucked up somewhat.
Khuy wasn’t accustomed to missing people—especially when he had the old Kalashnikov in his mitt. But he missed Fanny. Bad. It was a mean, relentless, toothache-nagging hurt that would not leave him alone, and would not let him sleep or eat or think. And it was compounded by the fact that he might have acted in haste when he accused her of setting him up and robbing him. What if she didn’t? What if it was more complicated, and some other slimeball was manipulating the situation? There was only one thing to do. Guys like Khuy Zalupa didn’t sit around and brood. As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough go out and kill somebody.
Khuy went to a bar in a part of town where he was sure that nobody would know him. Or want to. The place was full of tourists and poseurs and artistic types, and in that perfumed garden he was as inconspicuous as a triceratops turd in a wedding cake, but it was good place for him to think without having to keep one eye on the door.
He ordered a bottle of vodka. The waiter quickly decided that a reserved sign on the table would be superfluous. Khuy re
ached into his inside pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch and undid the drawstring with his teeth. He tipped the slugs out on the table and poked them with his finger. He idly wondered if it was some kind of record. He took the ballistics report from his inside pocket and studied it for the twentieth time, rolling each bullet in turn from the pile as he ticked them off.
One 7.62 Nagant, fired from an M1895. Almost an antique. That one was fairly easy. The only person he knew who used such a gun—or, rather, used to use such a gun—was Oleg.
One .32 Harrison and Richardson Magnum, almost certainly fired from a Ruger out of Connecticut. Very expensive cartridge, and the weapon of a connoisseur or an egotist or both. There was a note that said that the model was popular with women in the States.
One 460 Rowland, blasted from a Smith and Wesson 25/625, by some Dirty Harry wannabe or some guy with penile size issues. Normally it would drop a moose wearing chain mail, and would have dropped Khuy for the long count if it hadn’t drilled Bolshoi’s pelvis first.
One 9mm Makarov from Stetchin Kobalt, and a 9*-x21 Gyurza from a SR-1 Vector. Armor-piecing. Very nasty.
And then the big daddy: a 7.62 Nato zipped from the barrel of an M40A3. An American rifle.
Khuy pondered the bullets. There was enough lead there to replumb his shithouse, and enough firepower to have unceremoniously shuffled even him off the mortal coil, if even one of the slugs had been properly placed. And those weren’t the kind of guns amateurs used. So what the fuck went wrong? Or, from his perspective, what the fuck went right? For the thousandth time he sifted through the fragmented memories of the night he got shot, trying to piece together a facsimile of what may or may not have happened. If he had it figured more or less right, it went something like this:
Justifiably feared Russian crime czar sets up meeting with trusted and loyal deputy and bodyguard on a pigeon shit-covered bridge over the frozen Moskva River in the early hours of a typically inhospitable Moscow winter morning. Trusted and loyal deputy doesn’t show up. Not only does trusted and loyal deputy not show up, but when justifiably feared Russian crime czar arrives home expecting a little poontang and Beluga, trusted and loyal deputy is waiting to set big nasty fucking dog on him, having previously punched seriously foxy glamorous girlfriend in her kisser, giving her a fat lip and a black eye.
So far, it was a fairly straightforward case of backstabbing, duplicity, betrayal, and life-and-death struggle with a savage beast and a skilled, hardened, vicious Tartar warrior. Khuy had to admit that Oleg was a seriously shit-hot fighter and Bolshoi was some kind of pooch. If it had been Bruce Lee and a polar bear they might even have stood half a chance, but as it was it was Dorothy and Toto against the Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms.
Oleg’s mistake was to stand back and watch the fun, and by the time he realized, to his amazement, that Bolshoi was actually being physically overpowered, the advantage had been lost. Being attacked by a dog is a terrifying experience, and in many cases people are simply helpless before the power and rage of the animal, but in some cases people are actually the victims of their own fear, and either freeze or try to run, which allows the dog to press home its attack unopposed.
No male mammalian enjoys being kicked in the bollocks. It is guaranteed to take the wind out of the stiffest sail, and Bolshoi was no exception. His primal instinct was to leap at Khuy’s throat, which he duly did, but in doing so he exposed his hairless, shiny nuts to an incoming size-fourteen Russian Army-issue steel toe-capped ammo boot. As the air gushed out of Bolshoi’s lungs Khuy grabbed his neck in a steely grip, and began to literally tear his throat out. When Oleg’s brain finally managed to process the information that Bolshoi was being manhandled, and that Khuy was about to rip his head off and shit down his neck, he pulled out his piece, but Khuy swung the struggling, snarling animal between himself and the gun, forcing Oleg to jig backward and forward trying to get a clear shot. Using Bolshoi as a shield, Khuy was able to reach behind his back, out with his own Roscoe, and was about to let Oleg have it in the guts, gunslinger-style, from under the belly of the squirming dog.
That was when the artillery started going off. Khuy figured that some of the shooters might have actually been concealed in the room. The fact that a couple of killer slugs had plugged the dog and saved his life was clear, but what was not clear was who was shooting at whom, and why. He had been left for dead, and there was no one to tell him the real story of what had gone down except the silent, spent slugs.
But it was a start. Every puncture tells a story, as they say. Maybe, he admitted to himself, his judgment was being clouded by how much he wanted and needed Fanny to be innocent, but when he found the shooters, he would know, one way or the other.
Who uses Russian guns and Russian ammunition? Russians. Or Americans in Russia using dodgy weaponry. And what kind of Americans would know how to come by dodgy weaponry? Rich, double-crossing suka mandas like Endless Lee. And who uses American sniper rifles and ammunition? American snipers. And how many American snipers could reasonably be expected to be operating in Moscow at that particular time? The correct answer would be two: Low Roll and Hard D. And who would be in a position to know and influence the aforementioned assassins, convince them to change objectives, and have a motive for doing so? Yup—nephew Hyatt. Maybe it was going to be easier than he thought.
Khuy Zalupa’s assessment of the situation was pretty much on the money as far as it went. But it still didn’t explain where the Italy-shaped pool of blood had come from.
***
Hyatt wasn’t in a quandary. He was in a ZiL limousine. And the ZiL limo was heading down the official police and military-only lane of the freeway at one hundred and ninety-three kilometers an hour. He would have been going at two hundred and seven kilometers an hour, which was the absolute optimum-condition top speed of the vehicle, but Hard D’s lard ass weighed so much that it took some of the lung capacity out of the motor.
Hyatt was a genius, but he was still a young man, which meant that the damage to his pride and his ego were bothering him more than the loss of a priceless artifact and a potentially civilization-changing piece of technology. Which meant that the expunging of one Monsoon Parker, esquire, was more important to him than the recovery of the aforementioned incalculably valuable objects. If he had exercised a little maturity and stopped the car, it is entirely feasible that Low Roll and Hard D could have brought the Cessna down with a little intelligent concentrated fire, and a proper calculation of trajectory and lead distance, but not even Low Roll and Hard D could be expected to shoot down a moving plane from the back seat of a wildly careening ZiL, especially as ZiLs are renowned for their shit suspension and Hard D was wedged tighter than Queen Latifah’s Tampax.
There is something slightly ridiculous about young people using profane language. It’s a bit like seeing a young guy with a beard—kind of pretentious. Anyway, after Hyatt had exhausted his limited repertoire of cuss words, and the Cessna had buzzed away over the treetops, Hyatt turned to his passengers.
“Did you get him?”
“Hard to say,” said Hard D.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the plane is full of fuckin’ holes, but whether we plugged anybody inside is impossible to say unless we see the crash site,” said Low Roll.
“I thought you two were supposed to be able to shoot.”
“You should have stopped the car like we said.”
“He was getting away!”
“He fuckin’ is now.”
“Well, you two clowns better do something about it.”
“Hey, son. If you want a demonstration of our fuckin’ shootin’ ability, you goin’ the right way about gettin’ it. Capisce?”
Hyatt suddenly realized the vulnerability of his position. “Er. Yeah. Sorry, guys. I’m a bit emotional. Let’s, er, let’s pull over somewhere. Maybe get a bite and a drink while I think this thing out.”
***
Guilty. Monsoon Parker was familiar with the
word. Anyone who had heard the judge say it that many times had to be. But Monsoon was only familiar with the term in the legal sense. In the emotional sense, it meant about as much to him as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Which was why he was not feeling particularly guilty about abusing Maria Federovnaya’s hospitality. Sure, she had bathed him and tended to his wounds and smothered him in her huge, fluffy bosoms and sucked him off and let him bang her several times (even though it had been like throwing a wiener into the Grand Canyon and he could swear that there had even been an echo), and she had fed him and bicycled fourteen miles into the village to buy him a bottle of vodka, and she’d showed him the jeweled dildo that God had sent her from heaven, and had, all in all, been an all-around good sport who did not deserve to get clubbed over the back of the head with her own dildo when her back was turned and have her bicycle stolen.
Monsoon was still not feeling guilty as he boarded the train using the ticket that he had paid for with the money he had stolen from Maria’s purse, nor as he sipped the vodka or drank the piss-warm but still welcome beer that he had bought with the same money, nor as he looked out of the window and saw the endless pines march away into the distance and the roseate snow on the peaks of the mountains as the sun sank behind them and the shadow marched across the valley to engulf the train and the lights came on.
Nor did he feel guilty as the darkness outside transformed the train window into a mirror and he saw his image grinning back at him from inside his warm and cozy first class carriage, which he had bribed the conductor to make sure that he had all to himself all the way to Saint Petersburg.
But he did begin to feel a slight uneasiness at the way his reflection was looking at him. It was weird, but it was as if it was accusing him of something, and no matter how he adjusted his features, he could not get that look out of his eye.
The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) Page 29